To hell with delta smelt

R.J. Kelly’s July 19 Opinion column in The Signal (“Striking a balance in solving delta water crisis”) hit most of the right notes in most of the right places.

Kelly defined the issue of water conveyance from the north to the south in political terms that the average everyday ratepayer can understand. Though he did not make it as blunt as I would, Kelly admitted that many communities in central and Southern California are dehydrated and drying up because environmentalists oppose increasing the pumping of water from north to south.

We’re told, as Kelly reports, that this is all the fault of a three-inch fish that dies after expelling its offspring each season. But that is not the entire story.

The delta smelt is just another convenient scapegoat to protect Californians from the truth about why they can’t get the water they need.

Political operatives who are just plain against sharing the water resources of the north with the rest of the state have created an evil union with wannabe environmentalists that have latched onto that stupid fish to deprive communities in California of the water that they need to sustain the lives and productivity of their people.

I am just as much a lover of nature as the next guy.

But when I find myself so stressed by the lack of available water as to find myself yelling at my child because she left the water running while she brushed her teeth, I say to hell with the delta smelt.

But even if we expose this fishy story as a fraud, the robber barons of Northern California water will be there with another poster child to stand between Californians and the water they need.